Additional option for Find Duplicate Files
Posted: 2021-12-06, 16:25 UTC
Hello TC Community,
Searching for bitwise identical files is possible with
Find Files -> Find duplicate files -> same content
In case of two files with same size, the function compares them from the first to the last bit.
While this is intuitive and even desired in many cases, there are other cases where a complete comparison is simply not necessary.
Instead, it would be sufficient to compare the first/last n bytes only.
An example is many media file formats or firmware images. Even if they have the same since, differences would already shop up within the first few (kilo)bytes (or in the last few bytes which often contain a checksum or the like).
The suggestion is to add another option "limit to first|last x bytes" where x can be specified by the user.
This would increase the performance, especially when searching for duplicates on slow (network) drives.
It would also help to get a first and quick overview on potential duplicates in large file sets.
What's your opinion?
BR
funkymonk.
Searching for bitwise identical files is possible with
Find Files -> Find duplicate files -> same content
In case of two files with same size, the function compares them from the first to the last bit.
While this is intuitive and even desired in many cases, there are other cases where a complete comparison is simply not necessary.
Instead, it would be sufficient to compare the first/last n bytes only.
An example is many media file formats or firmware images. Even if they have the same since, differences would already shop up within the first few (kilo)bytes (or in the last few bytes which often contain a checksum or the like).
The suggestion is to add another option "limit to first|last x bytes" where x can be specified by the user.
This would increase the performance, especially when searching for duplicates on slow (network) drives.
It would also help to get a first and quick overview on potential duplicates in large file sets.
What's your opinion?
BR
funkymonk.